Baldr:I pay $60 every 4 months of World of Warcraft, according to this logic there needs to be an offline mode so like every Tuesday morning when the servers are down or I lose internet connection that I can play with my friends in off-line mode.

WoW is an MMO, not a single player game. The comparison isn't valid for that reason.

Azuaron:While that's a factually true statement, and Jim was a little schizophrenic about the point, the main complaint is that the game was literally unplayable for vast numbers of people for an unacceptably large period of time.

I'm with you when complaining about the game being unplayable. I bitched about it too. In WoW I played on a server that was down a lot. Totally valid point.

Diablo 3 is still an online game. The only difference between D3 and WoW is the word massively.

trollpwner:O.K., what it has is magic pixie fairy dust. That makes the game unplayable at times. The game you bought. For $60. In the single-player mode that should require no internet connection whatsoever.

Wait, I'm sorry, what was your point again?

Creating a new game in D3 is the same as zoning into a dungeon by yourself in WoW. That is not DRM.

But Diablo 3 is not an MMO. WoW is an MMO, Diablo is not an MMO. No matter if you define Diablo 3 as singleplayer or multiplayer, it is not an MMO. So Diablo 3 runs on DRM. Same as Steam and Origin are glorified DRM systems.

Except of course, Diablo 3 is not an MMO, the ignorance here is in your posts.

1) We aren't connecting to an online server at first. When you log in you are logging directly into Battle.Net 2, which is just a giant glorified lobby you wait around in before you decide like jumping into the actual online part. Hell I hate to even call it a lobby because there isn't even any ability to communicate with others UNLESS you are in a game. In that regard, Diablo 2 was more of an MMO because at least Battle.Net 1.0 allowed for free communication outside of a game.

2) There is ZERO excuse for restricting players to connecting online even if they play single player. Another key difference right there, you can't play WoW as a single-player title can you? Nope! Sure you can play outside of a group, but the fact that other players exist around and interact with you directly or indirectly means its still an MMO. Diablo 1 and 2 never required you to be online just to play without anyone else.

3) This IS DRM. If they wanted to protect their AH economy to ensure the biggest chunk of cash interest came their way, all they had to do was separate the Online Characters from the Offline ones. It's not hard, its been done before trust me, Diablo 2 certainly had no issue with it. Hell, if they were worried about hacks and everything, they could just have a 1-time Online check each time the game is launched before letting you decide whether or not you played offline or online.

The only reason I've seen people support Online-Only outside of the crap thrown around, is that the game we own isn't even the full game. It's online-only because Activision-Blizzard decided to withheld major chunks of necessary code from the release client, only to feed it as a temporary file to the client when you reach the areas its needed. Afterwards it gets tossed out until the next time.

Which well... is complete and utter bullshit itself. That kind of practice is even worse than Capcom and their blatant hard-on for Disk-locked DLC and shenanigans. Of course though, this is "Blizzard" we are talking about right? I mean god forbid that even one step of theirs isn't completely perfect, much less a game.

As an additional note, Ubisoft attempted this exact same kind of shit mate. Guess what? Hackers slammed the Authentication servers needed for the Online only DRM, rendered the games completely unplayable. They've since slowly backed off and away from it.

Diablo 3 is a MMO much like Guild Wars is a MMO. Except there's a 'lobby' in D3 (I agree that thing sucks).However, most of the game happens in online instances where you can play alone or with some friends.

There's no Disk-locked DLC or content that is streamed when you need it. There client's there, completely open for datamining.Your client is a client much like Guild Wars' and World of Warcraft's clients: contain information relevant for you, the player. What isn't available is information about item drops and storage, monster AI, map generation.

These are the facts. Now the reasoning behind it are possibly the following:- Stopping the pirates.- Stopping the item duping/hacking.- Having no offline/online differences.

My bet is on the second one. That it can be easily used for 1 and 3 may have helped, but I don't think it was the reasoning behind it this time.

cursedseishi:3) This IS DRM. If they wanted to protect their AH economy to ensure the biggest chunk of cash interest came their way, all they had to do was separate the Online Characters from the Offline ones. It's not hard, its been done before trust me, Diablo 2 certainly had no issue with it. Hell, if they were worried about hacks and everything, they could just have a 1-time Online check each time the game is launched before letting you decide whether or not you played offline or online.

Here's what I don't get. If the auction house gives Blizzard a kickback every time something is sold, why the hell would cheating be a bad thing? More crap on sale = more money for them, right?

As an additional note, Ubisoft attempted this exact same kind of shit mate. Guess what? Hackers slammed the Authentication servers needed for the Online only DRM, rendered the games completely unplayable. They've since slowly backed off and away from it.

You know what? I honestly wish Anonymous/Lulzsec was still kicking around. They'd probably have a field day with this. Imagine - the Battle.net servers down for an extended period of time, to the point where a Diablo III game disk becomes quite literally a $60 frisbee. I bet that would cause a shitstorm, eh?

The Human Torch:But Diablo 3 is not an MMO. WoW is an MMO, Diablo is not an MMO. No matter if you define Diablo 3 as singleplayer or multiplayer, it is not an MMO. So Diablo 3 runs on DRM. Same as Steam and Origin are glorified DRM systems.

D3 is an online multiplayer game. Jumping to the conclusion that its DRM is bad reasoning. I'm just pointing it out.

MB202:See, THIS is what happens when the people in charge don't have any idea what they're doing, or how the Internet works.

Oh, Blizzard know how this works. They know damn well what's going on.

This whole thing is just to support the stupid real money auction house, which hasn't stopped gold farmers, but rather turned them into hackers and hijackers. GG Blizzard. Diablo 3 is great but I wont be playing it for long.

So Jim, where would I stand with this? I hate always online DRM, and was intending to get Torchlight II instead. *However*, it was a friend of mine who gave me my copy of Diablo III. And yes, I've been playing it and to an extent enjoying it (Demon Hunter + Micheal Jackson's Thriller playing in the Background = Win).

Diablo 3 is not online because it's essential to the game's core function that it be online; Diablo 3 is online because it enables features no one was asking for and allows Blizzard to maintain a greater degree of control over the way their product is used (including, yes, ways that amount to Digital Rights Management.)

Believe it or not, I've had even worse lag than that. It got to the point where it was running at about 5 seconds per frame when I was doing the fort battles. As for getting nothing but praise, I know at least one of the magazines owned by future games, who the guy in the video is in charge of, called them out on it, and gave the game a 7/10.

Over the past few months people told me - repeatedly - that by skipping Diablo 3 I'd be hurting myself because I'm depriving myself of a fun experience. I don't know what they're talking about, I've been playing a game without any online-only DRM retardation since before Diablo 3 came out and I've been having fun straight through. Unlike them.

So not only am I having fun, I'm having smug fun. It's goddamn delicious.

Because the game is praisable. and so is diablo 3. But you see, the part where you say this should be called out just as much or more is where i have a problem. Bugs and glitches are not on purpose. The game makers dont want them to exist, they are accidents and actually Skyrim wasnt that bad in terms of bugs n glitches, given how HUGE the game is. The online Diablo was purposeful, it had greedy intentions, and is downright bad decision on part of Blizzard. So no, the bugs n glitches of Skyrim are not as bad as this is. You are exageratting its importance.

However, i do agree that they should be called out, and that people should criticize bethesda to run more thorough testing. But dont compare accidental game breaking bugs to purposeful online DRM wich they KNEW would stop people from playing their game.

The game was pretty much unplayable on PS3 and Bethesda took their sweet time releasing the patch, deciding that rather than put it out on PS3 urgently, they'd rather stick it in an average patch along side all of the other fixes, released on all platforms at the same time. They also did everything they could to hide the PS3 version, never demoing it and not sending out PS3 review copies.

Thats some pretty reprehensible behaviour. The bugs may have been unwanted, but Bethesda still decided to dissimulate the problems they were obviously aware of and dick their customers around.I'd expect a series famous for calling out BS in the industry to do so rather than drink the kool-aid.

Ignoring the problems and simply praising the game is letting devs get away with this 'We'll patch it later' mentality, just like telling people to get over Diablo 3's connection problems is letting publishers get away with useless online DRM. And theres where i think Jim is picking his battles.

Believe it or not, I've had even worse lag than that. It got to the point where it was running at about 5 seconds per frame when I was doing the fort battles. As for getting nothing but praise, I know at least one of the magazines owned by future games, who the guy in the video is in charge of, called them out on it, and gave the game a 7/10.

I'm sure the connection quality to Blizzards servers will become better a lot quicker than it took Bethesda to patch the PS3 version of Skyrim. And if i understand correctly Skyrim still has framerate problems to this day.

First off, yes I do think that consumers have a right to be disappointed and to voice their disappointment.It's just that I don't think that it's ever really going to achieve anything. Jim's anti-corporate positions are fine but he fails to understand what motivates corporate decisions i.e. profit, and that that isn't going to change. Jim claims that protecting Blizzard's RMAH is their problem, well the DRM is their way of solving this problem. Is it the most consumer friendly way to solve that problem? Probably not. Is it the most cost effective? Yeah it probably is, and that's why they've chosen it.

It's all about sending the right signals to a profit motivated firm. Is the aggregated result of the complaints going to result in a greater loss than the loss in not using an anti-consumer form of protection? I don't think it is (though I freely admit I may be wrong), in which case don't expect change anytime soon.

I guess what I'm getting at here is if you want change in the industry, you need to be aware of the motives of the various stakeholders, so that pressure can be better applied to affect that change.

Jim, I agree with you on just about everything you said, but I do take issue with one thing. The auction house does not only benefit Blizzard and stopping cheaters is not only Blizzard's problem. The auction house is a very nice function in the game which could easily become one of the game's main draws and could add significantly to the game's lifespan. For this reason cheating is everybody's problem as it means their goods in the marketplace will be swamped out by those produced by cheaters. In fact, I would even be willing to claim that the cheating really doesn't hurt Blizzard in the slightest as even the most limited degree of cheating prevention would be enough to stop cheating from becoming popular enough to make people not use the auction house. In the end it is a very nice feature of the game.

I don't ever see this as being labeled anti-consumer.PHA+PGltZyBzcmM9Imh0dHA6Ly90My5nc3RhdGljLmNvbS9pbWFnZXM/cT10Ym46QU5kOUdjVENOXzFxSGVwTGJ6OXFqQ3lJLXpmaHhlaGdndmFTQXE4R3hCaW43bklPRUFsNlBCSFRUdW5hMHI1d213IiBhbHQ9ImltYWdlIi8+PC9wPg==

Valid points made but it is a matter of opinion. Its an opinion that the "always-online" function constitutes DRM, regardless of whether or not its classified as such, and similarly any defence of the "always online" feature is similarly opinionated. This is true despite whatever evidence may be presented by either side.

That said the perceived entitlement issue is, and I bring this up due to the video making a point to get across how absurd that viewpoint is, just an opinion. Both valid and invalid depending on your perspective. It is amusing to note that many of the people who are now bemoaning Blizzard's handling of the release, continuing issues with the achievement system etc. are the same people that (in my experience, from my perspective) spent a great deal of their time scoffing at the whole ME3 mess.

I'm not personally invested in either but when people are so blindly hypocritical I just can't help but make note of it.

Crono1973:The RMAH was created to put more money into Blizzards pocket and the DRM is forced on us to protect the RMAH.

Yes, and how should Blizzard make sure people who do use the RMAH (i.e. Real Money Auction House) has their information secure? You don't want malicious users to steal credit card information or identities stolen, otherwise you'll have a mob of angry customers at your door for poor security service and the government to investigate your company for the damages done. This is dangerously close to the situation that happened to Sony last year where all those customers got hacked when Sony's servers were opened at that time. Considering Diablo III is meant to be a global game launch, I don't blame Blizzard at all for including this kind of intrusive security feature.

But to create this kind of security they would have to stick to something like an MMORPG business plan where players have to play on a server, even ones that do prefer playing offline like introverted humans (myself included). Its hard to really say there is "DRM," for me, when the game has features more familiar with an MMORPG. But whether its DRM or not the damage is visible, as Jim Sterling's video points out.

Well, if you knew there were going to be always online DRM when you choose to put down $60 for the game, then I don't see how you can reasonably complain about the game featuring it.

You can however very much reasonably complain when the always on DRM isn't working. It's Blizard's responsibility to provide constant and consistent functionality, and when they fail to do so, criticism is in order.

Of course, nobody will really care about your opinion when you've already thrown down the money. If you want to efficiently curtail the practise of always online DRM, simply don't buy the games that come with it. Voting with your wallet is the only way to be heard, and not getting to play Diablo III a survivable sacrifice.

The Human Torch:But Diablo 3 is not an MMO. WoW is an MMO, Diablo is not an MMO. No matter if you define Diablo 3 as singleplayer or multiplayer, it is not an MMO. So Diablo 3 runs on DRM. Same as Steam and Origin are glorified DRM systems.

D3 is an online multiplayer game. Jumping to the conclusion that its DRM is bad reasoning. I'm just pointing it out.

Except for the fact that it's a direct sequel to 2 other games that have always had a singleplayer and lan option to them, and battlenet stuff was separate, in other words, if their auction house doohicky had been made specific to online stuff, and they had left a singleplayer component in it along with an open multiplayer thing for lan and such nobody would have any complaints.

Sure THIS diablo game is online only, but as a fan of the first two I see this step as a travesty, it's a goddamn step backwards, it's easy to prevent cheaters online if you have all character data stored serverside, like they did in diablo 2 anyhow, so why the fuck would we need it to be always online for singleplayer, who the fuck cares if someone cheats in singleplayer, or in a lan game with friends, who may also be cheating? NOBODY... except blizzard apparently.

So yeah the complaints come from people who don't like to have their singleplayer experience(which shouldn't affect anyone else ever anyway) get castrated simply because blizzard was too damn lazy to separate the two, also too lazy to install adequate servers.

Walter Byers:D3 doesn't have anymore DRM than WoW. Calling it DRM is either dishonest or ignorant on your part.

... Did you watch the video or just see it? WoW is an MMORPG aka multiplayer only. Diablo 3 is not an MMORPG, in fact it's largely expected that a huge portion of people will be playing solo. If the game doesn't require you to play with other people and you're perfectly able to play alone then why make it online only? Because it's DRM; it's designed to prevent piracy and item dupping/hacking. It's easier for Blizzard to inconvinience millions of people than have to deal with the problem themselves.

Imperator_DK:Well, if you knew there were going to be always online DRM when you choose to put down $60 for the game, then I don't see how you can reasonably complain about the game featuring it.

You can however very much reasonably complain when the always on DRM isn't working. It's Blizard's responsibility to provide constant and consistent functionality, and when they fail to do so, criticism is in order.

Of course, nobody will really care about your opinion when you've already thrown down the money. If you want to efficiently curtail the practise of always online DRM, simply don't buy the games that come with it. Voting with your wallet is the only way to be heard, and not getting to play Diablo III a survivable sacrifice.

i still think they should have a right to complain about it, but having said that by buying it they did allow blizzard to get away with it

Meh, Jim failed this time.Still, I get him, bandwagon of popularity is hard to miss.Mind you, he has a point, and a good one. But sadly, this kind of rant should have happened ages ago.

Sadly, Diablo 3 is a MMO, in the sense its 100% server run. I never heard Jim complain about Guild Wars even though it was a very similar deal. But yeah ... You gotta do what's hot I guess.

Blizzard deserve some rubbing in. They made a design decision to run Diablo 3 like Guild Wars. But I will be watching this space for next DRM incident. And I will be watching if we can finally talk about details and complexity and not only ramble on impulse about what's hot.

Why in Jim's name did you NOT TELL PEOPLE THIS IN ADVANCE! You freaking knew how Diablo 3 is designed Jim, I know you have the technical knowledge as well. Too bad you didn't make this episode before purchase time, eh? I sure wish you did, so people would not hallucinate about singleplayer game that is designed to run 100% remote after they made an uninformed purchase.

In my eyes it is very, very simple. When they had offline/online characters, hacks made it into the game. Now they only have Online characters, hacks have yet to make it into the game and probably never will. Ergo, This system is a success and worth it.

As for the whole internet connection thing? Well, I have made my view on that very, very clear over the last few days. The requirements for any given game are on the box. If you do not have the hardware requirements, you need to upgrade your hardware. And if you do not have DSL, well, you need to get DSL.

Either games start pitching towards the lowest common denominator (My old Laptop has 256mb of ram. Hell, we have an older one somewhere that has about 256mb of hard disk space) then games will stagnate.

The world moved. You didn't.

I know it sucks if you cannot play a game because you do not have the requirements. But these days, asking you to have a stable internet connection is no longer a huge ask. At all. Like asking you to have more than a GB of ram is no longer a huge ask.

dagens24:... Did you watch the video or just see it? WoW is an MMORPG aka multiplayer only. Diablo 3 is not an MMORPG, in fact it's largely expected that a huge portion of people will be playing solo.

It is a 100% server run game. It might not be MMO but it uses exactly same technology. Even Jim is well aware you cannot remove authentication from server ran game, but he still decided to not sound nerdy, he went for pop.

I think people have to realize you cannot change a design decision. This episode should have aired months ago, so everyone would get educated before buying. Jim is right tho, you can complain now, but it is worth jack shit, just check the Jimquisition about Voting With Your Wallet.